Child Marriage and Intimate Partner Violence: An Examination of Individual, Community, and National Factors

Abstract

Despite being a human rights violation, child marriage still takes place across the globe. Prior scholarship has shown early marriage to be associated with an increased risk of intimate partner violence (IPV). Drawing on data from the nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys—conducted in developing and transitional nations where rates of child marriage tend to be higher—the current study provides a cross-national examination of individual-, community-, and national-level predictors of child marriage and their association with physical and emotional IPV. The sample of ever married women includes 281,674 respondents across 46 developing and transitional nations. Findings reveal the prevalence of child marriage was largely consistent with worldwide estimates. Over half of the sample (59.97%) were over the age of 18 when they married and about 1 in 10 women were married at age 14 or younger. A later age at marriage, measured continuously, was associated with lower odds of physical and emotional IPV. When considering the 18 and over cutoff traditionally used to operationalize child marriage, the odds of physical and emotional IPV were lower for women who married over the age of 18 than women who were 14 and younger when they married. However, there was a confounding effect when considering age at marriage as 18 and over when community-level predictors were not included in the model estimating physical abuse. This underscores the need to consider the nested nature of respondents’ experiences. Further, national legislation that protects against child marriage was not associated with risk of physical or emotional IPV. However, population size increased the odds of physical IPV and lowered the odds of emotional IPV. Such findings can be interpreted in light of opportunity theory and provide direction for prevention and intervention programming.

Cross-National Associations between Age at Marriage and Intimate Partner Violence among Young Women: An Analysis of Demographic and Health Surveys from 48 Countries

“…Our results add to the previous evidence on the negative impacts of child marriage on young women globally [ 8 , 15 , 26 , 27 , 28 ]. Worldwide, efforts to address child marriage include interventions to prevent marriage before age 15 or age 18, and to delay the age of marriage.…”

“…Upon using this approach, it became evident that the likelihood of a girl experiencing IPV is delayed for each increase in the age at first marriage. This approach diverges from most studies in the literature, which rely on specific cut points to analyze the potential consequences of child marriage (e.g., ages 15 or 18) [ 15 ]. In comparison to the previous multi-country studies, our findings also provide more robust evidence of the significant associations for all types of IPV (physical, sexual, and emotional), which were investigated separately.…”

“…Secondly, large age and education gaps between girls and their husbands are common in child marriages, which can further fuel power imbalances within relationships and lead to an increased risk of IPV (since husbands are usually older and more educated) [ 8 ]. Thirdly, in contexts where child marriage is common, individuals, families, and communities may hold views and beliefs that violence against the wife is justified in several situations, also increasing the risk of experiencing IPV [ 14 , 15 ].…”

“…Associations with psychological IPV were not investigated in this study. More recently, Hayes and Proto [ 15 ] conducted a pooled multilevel analysis of national survey data from LMICs to investigate predictors of lifetime IPV and found that a later age of marriage (>18) was linked to a decreased likelihood of experiencing physical and emotional abuse even after controlling for community-level factors and national-level norms and policies on child marriage [ 15 ]. Country-specific effects were not investigated by the authors along with the pooled analysis.…”

Intimate Partner Violence and Age at Marriage in Mali: The Moderating Influence of Polygynous Unions

“…Later age at marriage, on the other hand, has been found to be associated with a reduced likelihood of reporting IPV in the Congo (Tlapek, 2015). Additionally, a cross-national study of developing countries found an association between women's early ages at marriage and increased prevalence of IPV (Hayes & Protas, 2022). Other crossnational country-specific analyses have reached similar conclusions (Kidman, 2017).…”